The Sisterhood (34 page)

I was mooching around, shivering at the chill on my bare arms, when my mobile rang. I picked up a random, expensive carton of fortified mango juice, and threw it into my trolley. Then I answered. I longed for it to be Tom. I was desperate to try to convince him again.

'C'est Papa.
' He didn't sound happy.

'Papa,' I repeated. I stood on the bottom of the trolley, and skidded along in a kamikaze manner. 'How are you? How's Mother?'

'Oui, ça va.
Look, Helen,' he continued. 'You have to stop spending our money. I'm sorry, but you do.'

I rolled my eyes. 'That's not fair.' They had paid for Tom to come over, even though he was supposed to be at school. They would rather spend their money on him than on me. He was right: they didn't love me.

'I'm sorry. We've never worried about money in the past, but this year is not going well with the wine, and sales are down everywhere. The drought is taking its toll and we have to cut back our spending. I have to say,
chérie,
that most of our spending comes from you. You have a job.'

I was cross. 'I have a job in a café! It doesn't pay well.'

'So you should think about a career. A real job.'

'I've got one lined up. I might be coming home at the weekend, just for a few days, OK? I've got a surprise for you and Mother.'

He was taken aback.
'Génial.'

He did a good job of pretending to be happy.

I redoubled my efforts with the shopping. I threw in hummus and paté and Duchy Originals and anything that looked as if Liz would like it. It all seemed disgusting to me and I wondered, for the second time that day, whether I might be going to throw up. I bought two packets of eco-friendly nappies in the newborn size. I got Liz three different types of biscuit and an array of the Green and Black's chocolate she liked. I bought fruit and vegetables, fish and lentils. The bill was huge, and I paid it proudly with Papa's credit card. As I waited for it to authorise, I was suddenly afraid that he might have stopped it. To my great relief, he hadn't.

I didn't want to do the next thing, but I knew I had to. Tom was right. This was my duty. I had done some research on the internet, and I had a vague idea of what I was going to say. It would not be pleasant. I hated myself.

There was a patch of grass round the back of Waitrose. I sat on the wooden bench, put all the carrier bags down around me, and took out my phone. I dialled the number I had copied down from Liz's phone.

'Hello?' said the voice.

'Hello,' I said crisply. 'May I speak with Mr Steve Leavis?'

She stayed in France, and realised that she was quite good at languages. France was an interesting place. The best thing about it was the fact that it wasn't England. She bought a cheap moped that often didn't start, and found a job in the new Roissy airport, where she worked in a bar. They liked the fact that she could speak English, and they didn't mind that her French wasn't good.

It was exciting, working in an airport. She loved seeing people coming and going, having adventures, starting new lives. She often looked at them, at the ones who weren't business travellers, and imagined where they might be going, and why. She made up little stories about them. She lived in a daydream, much of the time.

Mary rented a little room in Paris and lived a different dream for a while. She survived on baguettes and cheap red wine. Nearly two years after Elizabeth's birth, Mary wrote her a card. She even changed some money into pounds to put inside it, but she could not bring herself to send it. She did the same a year later. She couldn't manage to think of herself as a mother. Even though she was often lonely, she wouldn't have gone back, not for anything. She did not regret running away, because there was nothing else she could have done, but she was beginning to feel desperately sad for Elizabeth.

In time, Mary's French became passable, then almost fluent. She lived frugally, and saved obsessively, planning her return to India. She had plenty of friends, and she didn't miss anything about her former life. Nothing at all. She was itching to get back on the road again.

Then things changed.

One autumn afternoon, she met her friend Chantal at the Louvre. Mary had lived in Paris for three years, but she had never been inside the Louvre, so Chantal had said they would go together, and meander around looking at whatever came their way. It was a misty day, with a chill in the air, and Paris looked perfect. Mary pulled her long woollen scarf around herself, and made sure her knitted hat was covering her ears.

Chantal had brought two friends with her. One was Nicolas, her boyfriend. The other was Nicolas's friend, Jean-Pierre.

Mary had had plenty of casual relationships over the past few years. But as soon as she set eyes on Jean-Pierre, in the Louvre courtyard, she was afraid. Part of her wanted to turn and walk away from him. She was scared because she knew, instantly, that they would be together. The sexual attraction was like nothing she had known before. She tingled all over when he looked at her.

He was not particularly handsome, and he was no taller than she was. His dark brown hair reached his shoulders. He was wearing a black coat, over jeans and a paisley shirt. On the surface, he looked like lots of other people she knew, but when he turned his big dark eyes on her, and smiled, Mary was giddy and terrified. Even before they spoke to each other, she was certain he was her future.

They looked at art, but all Mary saw was Jean-Pierre. They stood together in front of Fragonard, and laughed at the nude pink women, and a heap of cherubs reclining on clouds. Jean-Pierre shyly reached for her fingertips. She looked at him, and laughed.

Everything that hadn't worked in other relationships suddenly did, this time. Mary had never been drawn in by a man before. She had never stayed interested for very long. Now, the world around her shrunk until there was nobody in it but her and Jean-Pierre. They talked about music and philosophy, and India and France. They hardly ever mentioned England. And, to Mary's amazement, Jean-Pierre loved her. He adored her. He worshipped her. She was absolutely consumed by him. There was nothing else that mattered in the world. From time to time, she thought of Billy Greene, and of the way he had turned her into his slave. Jean-Pierre would never do that. He wanted to do everything for her.

'Come to Goa,' she said, as they lay, entwined, in her attic bed. 'You have to come, because I can't go without you. We'll live in a hut on the beach, and get our water from the well. We'll go to full-moon parties. You have to get the ferry to get to the parties. You just stand on the bank and shout for the ferry man. We can wear Indian clothes. Everything is different when you're wearing Indian clothes.'

Jean-Pierre was not convinced.

'If we go to India,' he said, 'I'll have to speak English.'

She shrugged. 'So? I speak French all the time, and I don't care.'

'But I do. My life is in France. Come south with me, Mary. We can make a life here, in France.'

She was dubious. She was itching with the travel bug, but Jean-Pierre had turned her life on its head. Because she loved him, she agreed to give southern France a year. After that, they would go East.

They settled down. They took over a vineyard, and bought it out. They made good wine. Jean-Pierre wanted children, but Mary said no.

She was terrified when she told him about Billy and Elizabeth Greene. To her amazement, though, he didn't judge her. He thought it was a sad story, but he said he had always wondered about the sadness in her eyes, and now he knew.

As the years passed, she was resolutely unable to regret her flight from poor, defenceless little Beth, and so she knew she could never have another child. Jean-Pierre accepted it. She wrote a sentence on a postcard and sent it to Billy, asking if he wanted a divorce. Billy refused to have any contact with her, but his parents and his lawyer helped sort it all out. Mary asked her former mother-in-law, by letter, how the baby was. Mrs Greene did not reply.

Mary and Jean-Pierre were married in a small, happy ceremony at the local church. She was settled. She happily let go of her Goan dream, because in its place was a reality in which she was cherished.

When she was thirty-eight, she discovered that she was pregnant. She was hysterical with fear through the pregnancy, but when she laid eyes on tiny baby Helen, the strangest thing happened. She was knocked down by love. Everything that hadn't happened the first time did happen this time. It was like her meeting with Jean-Pierre, yet even more surprising. It was the most unexpected thing that had ever happened to her. She loved her daughter.

26 June

My eyes were closing. It was almost irresistible. I can't sleep, I reminded myself. I mustn't fall asleep. I must not. My head rocked forward, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. When my chin touched my breastbone, I jerked upright again, but couldn't shake myself awake. I felt my head beginning to descend.

The room was warm. I heard an insect buzzing by my ear. Had there been a breeze, I might have been able to stay awake. But it was getting hotter and hotter. The warmth of so many bodies was stultifying.

'Miss? Miss?'

A whisper of a giggle went round the room. I forced my eyes open a slit. As I remembered exactly where I was and what I was supposed to be doing, I was horrified enough to wake up properly. I looked for a waving hand.

'Yes, Charmaine?' I said, as briskly as I could.

'Can I have some more paper, please, Miss?'

'Mmm. Yes, of course.' I staggered from my plastic chair, and picked up an answer booklet. I glared around at the GCSE candidates, all of whom appeared to be laughing at me. Perhaps they would do worse in their exams now, distracted by a heavily pregnant, dozing whale. Maybe they would do better, thanks to the serotonin rush this giggle would have given them.

I handed paper to Charmaine, and to everyone else who raised their hands, which seemed to be everyone in the hall.

'All right, Miss Greene?' asked Davy Johns as I passed his desk. There was a flutter of merriment.

'No talking,' I muttered. I sat down heavily and felt immediately drowsy again.

The door at the back of the hall opened, and Kathy came in. I looked at her warily. She had been smiling at me lately, sympathetically, her head on one side. I was ignoring her. The clip-clop of her heels rang out as she walked through the silence to my desk. I looked at her hands, with perfectly manicured nails, as she put a steaming mug in front of me.

I had never seen this mug before. It was shiny and new, without any of the usual chips and stains of staffroom drinkware. It was shocking pink, and the writing on it was black. 'I'm not fat,' it said, on one side. I turned it round. 'I'm pregnant,' it said on the other.

She smiled as she put it down. 'Present for you,' she whispered. 'New mug.'

I sighed. It was a relief to have her back. I touched her hand, and she squeezed back. I was overcome with a feeling of enormous relief. Other people might hate me, but at least I had Kathy back. I could forgive her, easily, for everything.

'Sorry,' she whispered. I nodded. That was all that was needed.

A ripple of laughter started up as the children nearest to the front read the mug. Kathy and I both gave our scariest stares. When the sniggers continued, she clapped her hands.

'Shut up!' she shouted. 'Silence, or you're all resitting in September.'

'Thanks,' I whispered.

'Thought you might need a caffeine boost,' she whispered back. 'We all fall asleep in here, and you look like you should be at home, dozing, with your feet up.'

'I'll see you later.'

'That would be nice.'

I raised the mug to her. 'Cheers.'

She winked and left the room, dispensing icy glares right and left as she went.

I sighed, forced my eyelids to stay open, and tentatively sipped the brown liquid. It was lukewarm and stale, and had clearly been in the staffroom pot for at least an hour, but I was grateful. With any luck, it would get me through the next hour of GCSE history. Then I would be free to leave. In two weeks, the summer term would end, and a month after that, my baby was due. This was terrifying. I was just about used to pregnancy, and now it was going to stop. I was going to enter the bizarre new domain of parenthood, and this one lasted for ever, not for nine months.

The thing that was driving me crazy at the moment was the constant injunction that I should 'make the most of your freedom while you've got it'. Colleagues told me this. Anyone I met who had children said it. Even Matt, whose life consisted of working all the time, grabbing Helen's bum, and taking drugs, had said it. Sue and Dad had both said it, in the past. I had not tried to contact either of them since Julie's call, because I was too exhausted to deal with Julie's ridiculous accusation. They had not contacted me, which probably meant they believed her.

A woman had stopped me on the street on my way to work that day. She'd put a hand on my bump, which had made me flinch.

'Your first?' she had asked.

'Yes.'

'Well, you make the most of your freedom while it lasts!' she'd said.

I wanted to scream at them all. How could I make the most of being heavily pregnant on my own, in a heatwave? In what way could I milk some unimaginable drop of luxury and ease from my current situation, as a working single woman who seemed to have alienated everyone I knew, to the point where my own father didn't seem to be speaking to me? I appeared to have Kathy back, but that was scant compensation. All that the world seemed to be saying to me was a loud: 'Ha ha ha, it's going to get worse.'

I stared at the rows of teenagers. Some of them I knew. Others I didn't. Of the ones I knew, some of them I liked, some I didn't. Some were good workers and would go far. Others were lazy, bored, unhappy. All of them had been babies, not so long ago. All of them had gestated, like my baby was doing now. They had flailed about, hiccuped, kicked and squirmed, and their mothers must all have been impatient and scared to meet them. And here they sat, wearing a comprehensive array of odd fashions, sucking pens and scribbling semi-legible musings on the Second World War. I watched impassively as an earnest-looking boy was shocked as his biro exploded in his mouth. As soon as he recovered from his blind panic, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve, leaving dirty black streaks on a white shirt. Then he jettisoned his pen on his spare booklet, popped a Polo into his mouth, and looked around, increasingly alarmed, for a new biro. I took pity on him, and took him one of my pens. He looked up, younger than he realised, and smiled the grateful smile of a little boy. For some reason, I was close to tears.